Becky Bell Becky's Page

Welcome to our CaringBridge website. We are using it to keep family and friends updated in one place. We appreciate your support, prayers and words of hope and encouragement. Thank you for visiting.
BECKY'S STORY: She has been suffering the last few years from liver failure which has caused her to be weak, tired, and unable to work. She did finally get on disability.  
Becky and I (her sister, Terri) had a wonderful vacation to England in July.  While there she caught a cold, but cold meds helped her through and we got home just fine on July 18th.  The following week, she was coughing so bad and nothing helped, so she went to her PCP. She immediately sent her to Fawcett Hospital in Port Charlotte. This was on July 23rd.  A blood test indicated she may have also had a heart attack.  So they did a heart cath, (which was negative..no heart attack). The problem with that was they didn't treat her coughing and Becky was still coughing a lot.  So the night of the heart cath, she coughed so much, it caused severe bleeding where the cath went in at the femoral artery. This actually happened twice..they moved her to ICU where she received 5 units of blood. She had accumulated a lot of fluids and was totally miserable. The stress and trauma had also caused her kidneys to malfunction, so they couldn't do their job to help remove the fluids. After 5 days in ICU, she was moved back to a regular room . She would take a step forward and seemed to be doing better, but then she would take 2 steps backward.   She had to get 2 more blood transfusions, but they couldn't figure out where she was bleeding from!  She was miserable! And they didn't seem to know how to help her. One of the nurses even told me her kidney damage was permanent!  I could see she was not getting better. A dear friend told me I needed to get her out of there and have her sent to Tampa General Hospital, the leading one in the area. They have many specialists dealing with liver disease and they do transplants.  I met with Fawcett's manager and voiced my concerns (complaints) about their treatment and told them I wanted her moved.  Thankfully, a doctor had come to the same conclusion. So she was moved to TGH on August 10th. Their care has been exemplary, and she has shown a lot of improvement.  Thankfully, the nurse at Fawcett was wrong, and her kidneys are now functioning at normal levels.  The fluids have come down, but still have a long way to go.
She has had many tests done at TGH, and they have determined she needs a liver transplant. She has not yet been accepted as a recipient though. There is a lot more testing to do to determine if she can be a candidate. 
Right now, they are concentrating on getting her fluids down, blood pressure stabilized, and getting strength back so she can go home. 
So this is Becky's story so far. I will be posting her progress daily in the journal,  so check back here often. With having to travel further now, it is hard for me to update everyone individually. Becky is so thankful for your love, cards, and mostly prayers!!